Algorithms won’t decide 2027 elections in Nigeria, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission said Wednesday, even as artificial intelligence reshapes how voters get information.

Joash Amupitan spoke in Abuja at the Artificial Intelligence and Democracy Forum 2026, organized by the commission, known as INEC, with the civic group Yiaga Africa. The forum took place 92 days before the elections.

What Amupitan said about AI and the vote

“Algorithms will not, and must never, decide the 2027 vote,” he said, adding that the choice of who leads Nigeria belongs to Nigerians. On election day, he said, the thumbprint of the citizen will decide the country’s future.

Algorithms have no conscience, no country and no vote, he said, and AI must remain a servant, not a master, of Nigerian democracy. They may analyze voting patterns, improve logistics and predict trends, but they cannot replace voters or decide who governs.

How AI is already shaping the polls

He did not play down the technology’s influence. AI will shape the information environment in which citizens form their choices, he said, speed up and secure election logistics, and change the tactics of both democratic actors and those who want to disrupt democracy.

He pointed to deepfakes, fabricated audio and coordinated disinformation as a growing threat to electoral credibility. The digital landscape, he noted, has shifted significantly since the 2023 elections.

INEC is developing a digital strategy to monitor the information space, he said, and is working with technology platforms to debunk false claims quickly and spot AI generated content about the elections.

Amupitan said the commission cannot protect the vote with technology alone. He called for coordinated action by political parties, civil society, the media, security agencies, technology companies and the judiciary.

The scale of the 2027 elections

More than 103 million voters are registered to vote at 176,846 polling units in 774 local government areas, which Amupitan described as one of Africa’s largest and most complex democratic exercises.

He said INEC has completed 10 of the 14 major operational milestones set out in the Electoral Act 2026.

Trust is the harder target. In 2023, delays in uploading presidential results to INEC’s online portal fueled public doubts, and the commission now faces a campaign season in which fake audio and video can spread within minutes.

Soon after taking office in October 2025, Amupitan said elections should be won and lost at polling units, not decided by courts. He also said INEC can do little through policy if the law does not support it.

The forum’s partners included civic and technology groups, among them the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development, Dataphyte, Microsoft, Google and TikTok.

The presence of technology firms matters because much of the political content Nigerians see online is distributed by their platforms, where AI generated images, audio and video are now easy to produce.

Algorithms may sort the information, speed up the logistics and flag the fakes. The decision on who governs, Amupitan insists, will still be made by ordinary voters at the polling unit.